


Into the Deepest Dark

by Gehayi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Gen, Law Enforcement, Loopholes, Magical Lab Work, Murder Mystery, Nature Magic, Nyctophobia, Nymphs & Dryads, POV Third Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sasquatch, Service Dogs, Urban Fantasy, Water Magic, magical law, some horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23279797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/pseuds/Gehayi
Summary: Solving murders isn't Rita Herrera's job; research is. But the FBI is desperately short of help, so a murder case just landed on her desk. Now she will have to deal with a cruel murder, a singular lack of evidence, a killer with a peculiar sort of immunity...and memories of fear that will not go away.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	Into the Deepest Dark

On Monday morning, Rita Herrera, accompanied by her fluffy golden retriever Ochoa, walked into her cubicle in the Jackson, Wyoming FBI offices and found a scowling green imp waiting for her. 

Ochoa whuffled at the imp, but otherwise treated it with indifference. A good sign. If the imp had been a message from her estranged father, Ochoa would have been far tenser and warier. Mildly curious indifference on the dog's part, Rita knew, meant that the imp wasn't a threat who was likely to trigger her PTSD but had instead been sent by one of her magically gifted bosses. A mere handful of her superiors preferred summoning imps to typing emails, and only three had found a way of evading the "loud security breach" that imps presented if they weren't trained not to use their voices. Tanisha Lincoln had taught hers to sketch and paint. Gabriel Saito's stable of imps played a mean game of charades. And Mason Kapule's…

Rita tapped the imp, a foot-high, pale green, sexless humanoid with flappy pointed ears that would have done a Muppet proud, on the shoulder. "Purple kumquat," she said, crouching down so that she could look it in the eye--the enchanted equivalent of a password and a retinal scan, except that imps, unlike computers, couldn't be hacked. Magical summonings from a different plane, like imps, perceived the "spiritual signature" of every person, human or not. They couldn't be fooled, either. It didn't matter how well disguised a person was; an imp would know who you were inside and would always know your correct name and pronouns...and when it was safe to use both.

 _But this one_ , Rita thought as she stared at the oddity before her, _seems to be a bit sluggish._ And that was peculiar. Either the spell creating the imp had been inadequate (unlikely, as most FBI employees were so rigorously trained that they could cast in their sleep) or one of her bosses was trying to support too many spells at once. And _that_ meant—

The imp curved one hand into an E and began shaking it rhythmically back and forth, as if it were a flashing siren.

_Emergency. Damn, why did I have to be right?_

The imp tapped its shoulder with a clawed hand, drew a circle around its face with a hand in the H Sign, Signed "four" and tapped its chin twice, and then shaped both hands into the Sign for Y and moved them down slowly. Rita automatically translated the Signs into words. _Boss. Hawaii. Talk. Now...Your Hawaiian boss wants to talk to you now._

Sighing, Rita scrabbled through her desk until she found a package of unopened Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. "You did a good job," she said gently, handing it the candy. "Here, this is for you."

The imp accepted the package gravely, nodded, and vanished.

 _At least it wasn't offended this time,_ RIta thought, weaving in and out of the maze of cubicles that lay between her and Kapule's office, Ochoa trotting at her heels.

Kapule was waiting for her as she entered his doorless office. He looked like a wrestler--tall, solid, and wide, a wall in human form. His tight black curls were cut short in a skull-hugging style that did not become him, and his eyes were large, dark and intelligent. 

"You and Ochoa need to go to Buffalo Lake," he said with uncharacteristic grimness. 

Rita shook her head, feeling that she needed to clear it. "Where's Buffalo Lake?"

"Idaho."

"That's Salt Lake City's problem, then, isn't it? Their field office _covers_ Idaho."

"Normally. Now...they're barely open because of the virus. So they tossed the case to Denver's field office. Unfortunately, Denver is having the same problem--not enough healthy agents and too many active cases. So this got passed on to us, even though we're not a field office, on the grounds that we need to help each other out. Which I can't exactly argue with. 

"So now I'm passing the case on to you. Buffalo Lake's in West Yellowstone, by the way. There are a few patrol cabins up near the lake."

"Yellowstone National _Park_?"

"Part of it. The area you're going to is on the Idaho-Wyoming border. I'll...let the rangers explain once you get there."

Well. That didn't sound ominous at all.

"Why me?" she asked in a small voice. 

Kapule sighed. "There aren't many other choices, you know. Half the building is out with COVID-19. Three-quarters of the remainder are working from home--as much as they can, anyway--on seventeen cases that Washington considers higher priority." He snarled at the last word.

"I'm not...I'm no field agent, though. That's never been an option." _Not since I was little, anyway._

"You have an immune system made of steel. You don't catch anything. You don't _spread_ anything. I can send you to a crime scene and be sure that no one will get sick because of you. . Do you have any idea how invaluable that makes you nowadays? Plus you're a good researcher. And you know some magic, even if you don't like it—"

"It's not that I don't like magic," Rita said, explaining this for what felt like the thousandth time. "I don't _trust_ it."

Kapule shrugged. "Either way, you're a mage. A federal license. An assortment of state licenses. Wyoming, Kansas, and Louisiana." A touch of envy brushed his next words. "You're even licensed in California and New York." 

Rita nodded, albeit as little as possible. Kansas had been her first assignment for the Bureau; Louisiana, her second. The Louisiana bureau chief had sent her to California for the longest and most physically and psychologically arduous of the licensing tests. When she'd passed that with flying colors, the same bureau chief had sent her to New York, which had the most difficult written magical licensing exam in all fifty states. Licenses from California and New York meant you could get reciprocity from pretty much any other state, and Rita wasn’t afraid to make that clear. 

That sort of assurance boosted confidence in her but irked people. Rita had no desire to irritate anyone. It never ended well.

"Sorry," she said, not quite certain what she was apologizing for. "Do you have a road map to Buffalo Lake? Ochoa and I will need to get going."

"It's about ninety miles west-northwest of here if you take ID-33 West," Kapule said easily. "But you're not taking that route. Which brings me to the final reason I picked you for this mission: you and Ochoa portal well. Which means that you can be there and can start investigating while most agents would still be on the highway."

 _Or getting lost en route,_ Rita thought. That was unlikely to happen to her; Ochoa, sweetheart that she was, always seemed to know in which direction safety lay. But still…

"Mason," she said, taking a shallow breath, "I'm a city girl. I'm from Detroit. I don't _know_ Yellowstone. I've never even _been_ there."

"Perfect time to learn more about it, then. Your portal's on the second floor. Room 204." And with that, Kapule settled himself behind his desk, turned to his computer, and opened a case file with a single, emphatic click.

Rita counted to ten twice before speaking again. "What am I going to be investigating?"

"I don't know _what_ we're going to call it." Frustration rippled across Kapule's face. "For now, I guess 'murder' will do."

***

The portal--a translucent purple bubble that filled half the room--was monitored by a Selenian, a lavender-skinned creature with nearly transparent, eternally moving hair vaguely reminiscent of a jellyfish's tentacles, yellow eyes with square pupils, and three prehensile "tails." Selenians were masters of summoning and banishing "interdimensional bridges", as portals were called in official documents, and could sense where one had been before the police or the FBI had arrived. No one was quite certain why they, unlike most fairy races, were willing to work for mortal law enforcement; the theory Rita had heard most often was that they regarded portals and the safety of those who passed through them as intricate yet fragile works of art.

Humans didn’t generally do well with portal travel.. Plunging out of one's own dimension, entering a dizzying corridor that was not perfectly adapted to the human species (despite portal operators' best efforts to match portals to the species that would travel through them), and then exiting with only a few minutes' warning was not pleasant. Vertigo, hearing difficulties, and nausea that lasted for days were among the more common symptoms. Some people became giddy and confused after a trip across an "interdimensional bridge." The minds of one-tenth of one percent, on entering a bubble, could perceive the realm that the fairy races came from; the shock was invariably so great that they could not reorient to mundane reality. One- _thousandth_ of one percent of humans stepped into the portals and were never seen again...and if the fairies knew what befell those unfortunates, they weren't talking.

Only a handful of humans could travel by portal with no after-effects, and Rita was one of them. So far, anyway.

 _Kapule must have requested the Selenian from a regional office. Jackson's isn't big enough to require a full-time bridge escort._ Mentally, she whistled. _He must have called in dozens of favors for this. What's going on here?_

"Um...hello? Margarita Herrera. FBI Researcher. I'm headed to Buffalo Lake, Idaho." She unclipped her ID badge from her navy blue jacket and brandished it as she'd been taught to do, though the Selenian took no notice of it. Instead, its hair surged toward her and began tickling the air about a foot in front of her. Selenians called this "tasting the spirit" of the person before them, which had gotten them a centuries-long reputation of being soul-eaters until a dhampir language expert had figured out that while Selenians _did_ perceive souls--and their absence--the "tasting" part was a metaphor. 

"Why is this one going there?" The sibilant words came not from the Selenian's lips but their tails--which, as near as human science could learn, did double duty as speech and reproductive organs. Their lipless mouths, filled with serrated teeth that would have done a shark proud, were used only for eating. "And how long will this one be staying?"

"I've been assigned to a case." Rita nervously ran a hand across the black braid encircling her head. "And I might need to keep popping back and forth to bring samples to the labs..unless a lab worker is scheduled to go with me?"

The Selenian shook their head. "This one and the loyal companion." A bow to Ochoa. "No one else."

 _Damn it._ It would have been so convenient to bring someone along who was an expert at magical and mundane evidence testing. _She_ definitely wasn't. 

"This one is advised to refrain from frequent trips," the Selenian continued. "Two trips, every twenty-four hours. No more." They bared their teeth in what seemed to be a warning. "Going is one trip. Returning is the second."

"Hang on," Rita mumbled. "I have to talk to my boss about this…"

A hasty phone call to Kapule confirmed three things: yes, he knew that she wouldn't be able to shuttle back and forth easily; yes, she could go home and throw a few things in a duffel bag as long as some of them were a can opener and cans of dog food, because he didn't want her pup to go hungry; yes, she could bring a magic lab kit with her, but hurry, because the clock was ticking!

Less than an hour later, she returned, having exchanged work clothes for an FBI sweatshirt, jeans and hiking boots. A crimson duffel bag crammed with warm clothes, heavy socks, a sleeping bag, necessities like a toothbrush and toothpaste, and the aforementioned cans and can opener was slung over one shoulder. She gripped a laptop case in her left hand; the kit from the magic lab was under one arm. Ochoa, almost vibrating in excitement and mouth agape in a doggy smile, stood beside Rita. A wordless hiss escaped the Selenian's "tails"; they were laughing.

"So much cargo. Good fortune to this one on their quest." The Selenian's "hair" stroked the air before the purple bubble, as if they were unlocking a door. "Enter now, please. No more delay."

Rita took a deep, deep breath. Then, with Ochoa trotting beside her, she stepped into the portal.

***

She and Ochoa landed on a dirt hiking trail in the middle of an immense pine forest. To her right was a log cabin whose primitive state looked as if it had been preserved for historical reasons.

To her left stood a ranger clad in a grey work shirt and olive green trousers.

He was almost a foot taller than her. Not that this was surprising. Almost everyone was taller than five feet. She couldn't see what color his hair was, as it was covered by his tan cavalry hat; even his eyes were shadowed by the brim. She did notice, though, that he had skin the shade of smoky quartz--a warm brown mixed with a touch of grey. Stress, perhaps?

As she gazed at him, he waved to her slowly. "Agent Herrera? Where's the rest of your team?" His voice, while perfectly calm, managed to convey his surprise at meeting a bouncing, smiling dog and a bejeaned woman weighed down with luggage instead of a diverse and healthy heptad or octet, clad in tailored suits and all but glowing with expertise.

"There's only me," Rita sighed as she walked over to the ranger. "And Ochoa, of course, but we're a package deal." Quickly she explained about the lack of available agents. "I'm sorry…"

"Bellrock. Gene Bellrock. And no need to apologize. To tell the truth, before you got here, I was wondering how I was going to explain to the feds that there's hardly anyone available to cover this case. Between the plague and the park being closed to prevent infection, there's just me and Ranger Otterson at this station. She's with the...body." 

At Rita's look of surprise, he shrugged. "I know. Big guy like me, why am I the one meeting you and not her, right? Well, I'm a technomancer. I'm very good at keeping machinery--like generators and radios--running around here. Otterson's a hydrologist. And a water mage. We thought that might be important, given where the body was found. And believe me, she's strong enough to take care of herself if she has to.

"Anyway. You can drop off anything you aren't going to need to check out the crime scene at Headquarters." He nodded at the antiquated cabin. "I guess you'll be bunking with us for a while. Once you're all set, leave the cabin. I'll ward the doors and then we can head on back to the lake. It's only about five miles from here."

"And...we'll have to walk," Rita said slowly.

Bellrock favored her with a crooked smile and a small nod. "Normally, I'd offer you a horse--living or a construct--to take you to the lake, but we're trying not to trample evidence underfoot...or under a horse's hooves, either. So yes, you'll have to walk. Sorry about that. Don't worry, your dog will guard your stuff—"

"She's coming with me." Rita gripped the lab kit so tightly that she could almost feel her knuckles pale. "I need her."

Bellrock shook his head. "Might be better to leave her behind. People are mostly safe hereabouts if they keep to the path. Dogs and toddlers don't always do that."

"Ochoa's different." _You have no idea how different._

He glanced at her dubiously. "That's what all dog owners say."

***

It took Rita all of three minutes to drop off her duffel bag and laptop, use the facilities, wash her hands thoroughly, and depart the cabin with Ochoa in tow. Mentally she congratulated herself on being so efficient. _Just like a real adult. I'm fine. I'm fine._

She already had a lurking suspicion that she was lying to herself, but she wasn't going to examine that suspicion too closely. _If I can just make myself believe that there's nothing to worry about and don't think about it, there won't be any problem._

Of course, _thought_ wasn't the main obstacle. Feelings were.

_Stop it. Stop it! There are people who would give anything to enjoy a nice peaceful hike through a national park with a kindly ranger by their side. And it's a beautiful day in July. And you and Ranger Bellrock are both healthy. Just enjoy yourself while you can. Before you have to go perform magical lab tests on a murder victim._

It was useless, however. The forest, oppressively quiet, was filled with flickering shadows, all of which seemed to have blood-soaked talons and cruel and vengeful eyes. She wasn't sure if she was hearing a harsh wind or the echo of _their_ vicious voices. And the trees...she couldn't see anything but trunks so high that they formed a wall and branches of pine needles so thick that they blotted out the sun, and it was like being a massive cavern made of trees. Tentatively she brushed her palm against a tree, and oh God, it wasn't a tree, it was a cold, wet limestone wall. 

And she _could_ hear them now, they were laughing, laughing in those terrible knife-like shrieks, as their leader intoned unfamiliar words that made her flesh creep, and she wanted to scream at them to stop, but she couldn't say a word, couldn't move, couldn't think, and then a massive boulder blocked the mouth of the cave, a stone covered in vomit-green wards, and she raced to the stone and pounded on it, the wards like squirming maggots, her throat so tight that only a thin whistle of air leaked out, and an inhuman voice on the other side of the stone said three words with sickening joy, and something snapped in her brain and she couldn't even _see_ anymore…

When she came to, she was curled up on the dusty hiking trail, and Ochoa was rubbing her face against Rita's hands. This had calmed her in the past, and the dog knew it. 

"Good girl," Rita wheezed, pressing her cheek to the top of Ochoa's head. "Good, good girl."

Bellrock was standing a few feet away, looking more than a little frazzled. "What _happened?_ "

 _Oh, fuck, I don't want to talk about this._ "I have PTSD. The shadows of the trees...triggered an episode. Or a memory." A convulsive shake wracked her as she spoke.

"That," Bellrock said, horror dawning in his expression, "must be one hell of a memory."

"Yeah." A brief pause. "I can't talk about it here. Maybe later. Maybe not. I don't know. But not here. Not where the shadows are. Please."

Bellrock pondered this for a moment, then nodded and offered her a hand. Rita tried to smile as she shook her head. _You're very kind, Ranger Bellrock, and I appreciate that. but right now I am about as strong as a rained-on bee. I need to feel that I can stand up on my own. I **know** I need help, but if I try to accept anyone's help this minute, I will shatter like cracked glass._

She pushed herself to her feet and stood there for a moment, wobbling. 

"If you really want to help," she said softly, "please talk to me. The topic doesn't matter. Keep me from focusing on anything but your voice until we reach...where we're going. Can you do that?"

And so, for the rest of the walk to Buffalo Lake, they talked. Or rather, Bellrock talked and Rita slowly, oh so slowly, began to listen to more than the sound of the words.

He was Apsáalooke--what white people called the Crow tribe--and he had grown up on a reservation in Montana. He liked machinery and technomancy and quiet, and there was normally a fair amount of all three, since it took a lot of mechanics and technomancy to keep any park operational. He and some similarly minded rangers were still here in relative isolation; their bosses' reasoning seemed to be that if they didn't have contact with any humans, they couldn't possibly get sick.

"You won't get sick because of me," Rita hastened to assure him, retrieving her wallet from an otherwise empty pocket of the lab kit and then pulling out a green and white card with a watermark of the Statue of Liberty on it. "Look. Certified 100% immune to every disease known to every creature on the planet. I'm where germs go to die. I'm the _opposite_ of Typhoid Mary."

Bellrock stared at her in a way that wasn't precisely cynical but at the same radiated doubt. "That's impossible."

"No. It's...roulette. A death curse was cast on me when I was small. " Her voice closed up at this and she had to massage her throat as she walked for the next several minutes to get it to open once more. "I had _layers_ of hexes on me at the time. Every wizard I've spoken to since thinks that the death curse interacted with the other spells and my own magic. There were...countless side effects. Thorns sprouting out of my skin. Hearing turned up so high that a fly's footsteps made my ears bleed and caused my bones to vibrate so hard that they ached. For a while, any light, even starlight, struck me completely blind. It took _years_ to untangle the curse and the other spells so that they could be banished. _Years._ " 

She gulped. "Anyway, between wizards and doctors, I was physically healed about a month after I turned fourteen. They decided that since immunity to all invasive parasites, bacteria and viruses was a good thing"--she wasn't immune to the bacteria her body needed to function, thank God—"they wouldn't banish that particular effect. I think they were afraid that trying to eliminate it would do further damage, but they didn't want to say so.

"I didn't want any trace left of that damned curse. But no one asked me. I was only a kid, after all."

Bellrock looked as if someone had smacked him across the face with a sledgehammer. "Fourteen when this ended."

"Yes."

"How old were you when it _started?_ "

"Six." Rita wrapped her arms around herself for a moment and shuddered. "I was six."

She took a deep breath and then very deliberately returned the card to her wallet and the wallet to the pocket of the lab kit. Bellrock looked as if he was about to say something else when the trail widened and Buffalo Lake hove into view.

It was navy blue--or so it seemed, under the summer sky--and, so far as Rita could tell, vaguely arch-shaped. Immense pine trees surrounded the lake, but they stood well away from the shore, which was flat, grassy, and utterly devoid of any colorful flowers. Rita couldn't shake the feeling that the trees were gazing at the lake in disapproval.

And there was no shade. The lake and its shoreline were drenched in sunlight.

"I don't see anyone," she said, squinting at the lake shore as if that would make a corpse materialize. "Could the deceased have self-resurrected?" It was a rare ability, but a few zombies still managed it out of sheer rage. And every once in a while, a master necromancer attempted to raise themselves from the dead and came back as a lich.

That was the thing. Death always altered you. You couldn't go back to being the person you'd been before. It was the ultimate trauma.

"The body's over to the left," Bellrock said, stepping off the trail toward the left side of the lake. Rita paused a minute--you _couldn't_ leave the path, you'd get _lost_ if you left the path--and then scurried after him. 

After a few minutes of pushing past the pine trees, Bellrock and Rita emerged from the forest to a small rounded knoll near the edge of the forest. As they strolled down the slight slope, Rita espied a long twisted shape lying on the grass and a large muscular ranger crouched on the ground beside it. _Wow, Ranger Otterson is a big woman._

Then the ranger--Otterson, presumably--stood up, and Rita saw why she was so big.

Otterson was a sasquatch.

Sasquatches had entered human society around the time that scientists started talking about climate change. There had been a meeting of experts at the UN, and a responsibility of sasquatches (that was the group word) slipped into the building and past any guards. Once they arrived at the meeting, they had calmly insisted in flawless English, Spanish, French, and Nlaka'pamux (the language of the Native tribe that had been one of the first to describe them) that they had been protecting the Earth and its environment for years, as had many other species. They simply wanted a seat at the humans' table, as what the humans did or did not do would affect everyone.

There had been quite a kerfuffle over that. 

Fortunately, sasquatches were, on the whole, patient and highly intelligent people. They had slipped into human society and human professions, especially those in the sciences, easily and comfortably. Some humans were still cracking corny and not particularly funny jokes based on old movies, true, but the sasquatches were ignoring them in a way that suggested the jokesters were little more than mannerless moppets who desperately needed to grow up. Sasquatches were likewise extraordinarily powerful mages by human standards, well able to defend themselves against any fools who thought that killing, hunting, or capturing one was a good idea. 

They were also, one and all, female-bodied. Sasquatch society contained seven different genders, but no biological males.

"Hello," rumbled the ranger in a deep voice. "You must be Agent Herrera. You may call me Daphne Otterson. This"--she gestured at the corpse, Signing _grief_ several times, as sasquatches could not weep—"was Larisa."

Rita gazed at Larisa's body and inhaled sharply. 

The first thing she noticed was that the victim had been hewn almost completely in half. No question that this was a murder, then. Sticky fluid had oozed from both halves of the body. Larisa had evidently been attacked from behind, too; she'd fallen face down on the grass.

The second was that the corpse--Rita supposed she had to call it that--wasn't human. 

Larisa in no way resembled a nymph from classical art. Her skin was grey and rough, almost bark-like, while her hair was...well, it wasn't hair.Most of it was straight, thin, dark green, and reminiscent of pine needles, but some strands were purplish-blue, stringy and almost fleshy. Her form was, so far as Rita could determine, androgynous; her upper torso curved outward slightly, but she had no breasts. Her face and features did not mesh well; the grey lips could have been shaped by an expert craftsman, but her hazel eyes, which were wide open, were disturbingly human in a face that seemed to have been carved from wood. 

Grotesquely, someone--most likely the murderer--had chopped off her hands and feet. Probably after Larisa had died; the stumps weren't oozing sap as the way that the bisection had. 

_She must have lived for a while after she was attacked. God, that must have hurt._ Rita forced herself to choke down the nausea rising at the back of her throat. Instead, she plucked a couple of disinfectant wipes from the side pocket of the lab kit, conscientiously wiped her face and hands, and donned a pair of medical gloves, a mask, and a surgical cap, all of which repelled every mundane and magical contaminant--or at least every known one.

She scrutinized the body. No point in testing the eyes; Larisa hadn't seen her killer, so a preternatural image of the murderer wouldn't be burned into her pupils. And of course any test for a corpse found indoors was impossible. 

So it would have to be the standard rituals, then--transitory ST displacement, the Spada-Vogel Chthonic Examination, Parts I and II, and so on. Rita sighed. Spada-Vogel would be done back at the labs in Jackson, provided she retrieved good enough samples now, but TSTD was supposed to be cast at the crime scene. 

Normally a forensic pathologist would autopsy a body first; it was too easy to drench a corpse in magic, distorting the health of the person prior to death. Sadly, that might not be an option here. 

"Do either of you happen to know what she was? A person, obviously, but…"

Bellrock shook his head. "I only knew her enough to see her around. Daphne was the one who talked to her sometimes."

"She told me once that she was one of the Limnatides, whatever that means, and that she wanted to leave Yellowstone," Otterson said in a soft voice. "She was planning to study marine sciences and oceanography, but she said the elders of her family were being stubborn."

 _Limnatides?_ Rita decided she would have to google that later. _When I'm not geared up to take samples at a crime scene._

She gathered what looked like sap and wood chips from the stumps of Larisa's limbs and from the death wound, as well as a sample of each type of Larisa's hair and some vitreous humor from her peculiar eyes, sealing the samples carefully and then stowing them in the lab kit. Once that was accomplished, though, she could do no more for the FBI's mundane pathology labs. 

She carefully peeled off the gloves, mask, and cap, neutralizing the spells on them three times before turning the objects themselves into oxygen. _"Climate change" takes on a whole new meaning when some fool releases permanently anti-magical air into a world containing magical people._ Then, and only then, did she remove a tiny lead box from the kit, touching a fingertip to the scarlet seal locking it and then whispering the word for "key" in Ancient Sumerian. Sumerian was a common choice for seals used in mass-produced magical lab testing; it was an extinct language most people had heard of. If that didn't work, she'd try Ancient Egyptian or Attic Greek.

Her guess was right. The box popped open, revealing what looked like a bronze ring. The top of it was flat, round and engraved with a circle filled with what looked like an eight-petaled flower. Each petal was etched with an intricate sigil.

"It would probably be better if the two of you backed up," she said apologetically. "This isn't going to be pleasant. I'd rather avoid dragging you into this if I can."

Once they had backed up a considerable distance--Otterson somewhat reluctantly--Rita slipped the ring on.

Both rangers vanished, and the sky turned black, filling with stars. Cringing and frantically reminding herself that Ochoa was right next to her, even if she couldn't see the dog at the moment, Rita turned away from the lake and faced Larisa, who was apparently shouting at someone. It was a bit hard to hear her, as a strong wind was blowing.

"I'm not _planning_ on breaking with tradition!" she yelled. Not in any language humans had invented; the spell auto-translated conversations that occurred when the test was active. If Rita listened closely, she could hear Larisa's words rustling and rippling. "I _want_ to protect the world! Just not"--there was a pause, and a sound that might have been a translated sob—"just not _your_ way. Why do you hate change so much?"

Rita looked around. She didn't see a soul. Yet Larisa didn't seem to be talking to herself, shouting what she'd like to say if she only had the nerve to talk back. She sounded outraged.

A quick glance at the sigil ring. Five of the eight petals were glowing yellowish-orange; a third of the symbol within that petal was illuminated, shining a sickly green.

So Larisa had died between thirteen to fifteen hours ago. And someone or something that was nature-related--someone who wasn't Larisa--had appeared thirteen hours ago.  
_About 2:00 a.m., then. Bellrock was probably asleep in the cabin. Otterson might have been on patrol--sasquatches can see in the dark, after all--but I don't believe she witnessed this._

She looked back at Larisa, who had fallen silent and was now glaring over her shoulder at...well, someone or something, but Rita couldn't have said who or what. She seemed to be silently fuming, but many supernatural creatures looked roughly human while not reacting as humans did. 

_And I'm not an expert on Limnatides. I never even heard the word before today. For all I know, looking furious means that they're listening. Or laughing._

That theory exploded a few minutes later when, as the wind escalated to a veritable gale, Larisa scowled at the starry sky and shouted, "It is _not_ betrayal! Just because I want something out of life that you don't—!" She lifted her arms in what seemed to be sheer frustration and then began to trudge toward the lake.

There was no warning when it happened, only a gust that struck Larisa at her waist and broke her in half. It should have cracked and splintered her wooden body--a normal wind would have--but instead the blow fell as if it were a chainsaw being operated by an invisible lumberjack. Larisa was almost entirely split in two when the wind stuttered to a halt. 

_As if remorse came too late_ , Rita thought, trying to focus on that rather than the nausea rising at the back of her throat. _Damn, this is hideous._

A long sigh came from Larisa, followed by one word. "Chew..." she whispered. Then a shiver rippled through her, and she died.

Barely a breath later, the wind blew against the Limnatid's feet, snapping them off at the ankles and then flash-baking them to ashes. Her hands snapped off a moment late. But before they could turn to ash, a large, muscular shadow appeared where the treeline met the lake shore and growled in Otterson's unmistakable voice, "Who's there?"

At that, the image of the past began to fragment and pixelate. A moment later, Rita was once more in the middle of a sunny Monday afternoon. Bellrock and Otterson were gazing at her with unreadable expressions, and Ochoa was snuffling at her hands. 

"Did you see anything?" Otterson demanded sharply.

"A little. Nothing that made sense." Rita shook her head, as if to clear it. "Did _you_ see anything before you found Larisa?"

She didn't expect a yes. After all, there hadn't been anything to see. Someone unseen had been there, no question, but the only obvious cause of Larisa's death and mutilation was the wind. How could you arrest the wind?

But to her surprise, Otterson glanced away, looking cagey. "I heard something..I'm not sure what. I have a hunch, but I won't testify that a hunch is true." She hesitated, then burst out, "I hope I'm wrong!"

"Did you see anything before she was dead?" Bellrock asked Otterson.

"No."

Rita had a feeling that Otterson was glad she could say that honestly. Which, she realized as she glanced around the lake, just made things more complicated. Because if Otterson wasn't going to talk, that meant that she would have to find other witnesses.

 _You must have known that I'd have to do this, you sneaky bastard,_ she silently told Kapule. _You must have realized it as soon as you found out where this lake was. And I missed it._

"If you want us to escort you back to the portal," Bellrock said, "Otterson can escort you back."

Rita contemplated this for a moment, then shook her head, sighing. "No. I still have witnesses to interview. My boss will expect it." _Will he ever._

"You mean Otterson." Bellrock clearly was not asking a question.

"Uh...no. Not at the moment. There are other witnesses I have to talk to first. Possible eyewitnesses." Rita's gaze swept over the trees--and their unseen dryads--encircling Buffalo Lake. "A whole forest of them."

***

She actually managed to work her way halfway around the lake in the next three hours, not that it did a scrap of good. 

She began by speaking to the grass on which Lasira was lying. She didn't expect much--from the perspective of grass, most of the world was fast, hot, loud, and, apart from size, largely indistinguishable--but she thought that it might have some opinion about whoever or whatever had caused a corpse to fall on it. Instead, it strove to avoid her questions. If it had been human, it would have been blushing and shuffling its feet.

_Accident,_ it whispered. _This happens when the wind gets angry._

And it refused to say any more, even though grass being stubborn was rather like a non-magical human waking up and breathing methane. It was possible, but "possible" and "plausible" were very different things.

Rita tried the shrubs next. Most of them were near the treeline and couldn't possibly have witnessed much, but shrubs were indefatigable gossips. Hearsay wasn't evidence, of course, and the human tendency to forget this was why the FBI rarely had nature mages interview them any longer, but if you remembered to take what they said with a grain of salt, you could learn a lot.

But not this time. Not a single shrub or bush had anything to say about what had happened or what might have happened. The latter was all but unheard of. Shrubs _lived_ to speculate. 

So then she turned to the trees. She was careful to be deeply formal and respectful to them; trees thrived on respect and were often all but mute in the presence of those who mocked or reviled them. Rita was conversant with the most formal tree-language, a kind of _lingua franca_ spoken in most groves of mixed species, and a smattering of Oak, Maple, and Hemlock. No Pinespeech, unfortunately. She would have to remedy that once the case was over.

But, as with the grass and the shrubs, the trees--mostly old trees rather than a mixture of trees and saplings--had nothing to say. The murder was already being seen to, they told her firmly. And this wasn't human business, anyway. A tragedy, yes. But nothing to do with human laws. Her attempts to explain were ignored.

As for the dryads...well, Rita did her level best, setting up a small altar, pouring out libations of wine, braiding wreaths of flowers, and chanting their praises. (No burning incense. Dryads, being spirits of plants that could burn all too easily, did not appreciate fire any more than California appreciated earthquakes. Fire, like earthquakes, happened--but most were much happier when it didn't happen in their vicinity.)

But despite her many overtures, the dryads were all but mute. One said that Larisa had been a fool and was swiftly hushed by her sisters. Another said that Larisa hadn't properly appreciated her blessings--which led to a great deal of nodding and no comments at all.

She had to face it; the dryads were downright terrified. Rita couldn't shake the idea that the word had gone out; no one was to say anything.

"I don't know why they'd feel that way," Otterson said when Rita proposed this theory to the rangers. "In fact, I'm not quite sure why you're here. You can't try anyone for a murder committed here, you know."

"I— _what?_ "

"Welcome to the Zone of Death," said Bellrock, shrugging. "There's a long vertical strip on the Idaho-Wyoming border where no one can get tried for any crime, and we're right in the middle of it. Not surprised you haven't heard of the place. Mundane and magical law both tend to ignore it."

"How did _that_ happen?" Rita demanded.

"The only court that has jurisdiction over Yellowstone," Otterson explained, sounding as if she was quoting a book, "is the district court of Wyoming. So anyone who commits any crime here has to be brought to the district court in Cheyenne. But the Sixth Amendment says that a jury in a federal criminal case has to come from the district and the state where the crime was committed."

"And," Bellrock continued, "there aren't any legal residents in this strip of land. Park employees--under normal circumstances--stay here for a few months and then get rotated elsewhere. Campers are, well, _campers_ , not residents. I'm sure we've got a few hermits living at the back end of nowhere, and you've met a fair number of dryads today, and yes, both groups live here full time...but this is wilderness. Who knows about them? They're off the grid. As far as the federal government is concerned, _nobody_ lives here."

"And a federal trial without a jury of legal residents would be unconstitutional," Rita said slowly. "And the state of Idaho can't try the killer because this is a national park and only federal law applies in a national park."

Bellrock nodded, favoring her with a wintry smile. "That’s where the name comes from. It's a fifty-square-mile loophole for murder. Injustice for victims is absolutely guaranteed."

"I appreciate your trying so hard," Otterson said softly, "but I don't know of any magical courts that you could give the evidence to. Certainly none that Larisa's people would recognize."

"Or the killer's people? Because unless they had one hell of an invisibility cloak, I'd swear it wasn't a human."

Otterson didn't take the bait. But she did look deeply troubled.

"And," Rita added, doing her best to keep frustration and rage from her voice and not quite succeeding, "if you both knew it was hopeless, why did you contact the FBI in the first place?"

Otterson lifted her head proudly. "Larisa was a friend. I was hoping that a federal agent could find a way around the problem." _Which you haven't yet,_ her eyes added.

"Come on, Agent Herrera," said Bellrock with gruff gentleness. "You've already walked five miles today and peeked backward in time. And Daphne, you've been out here since last night with a friend's body. You both need rest. Hell, _I_ need rest; this'll be twenty miles I've walked today. And it would probably be a good idea to get back to the cabin before it gets dark."

Rita thought of being shrouded by shadows at the forest at night and shuddered. "Point taken."

The walk back to the cabin was slow and silent. By the time they were halfway there, Otterson had scooped up Ochoa, who was weary and footsore, and was eyeing Rita to see if she needed the same treatment. Rita resolutely avoided meeting the sasquatch's gaze, if only because she needed to think. Why report a murder when the murderer couldn't be tried? Arrested, possibly, but not tried.

Well, couldn't be tried by _non-magical_ law.

Otterson hadn't expected anyone to show up. She'd said as much. So this was likely Bellrock's idea. However he'd relayed the information to the Jackson office, he'd definitely communicated the idea that sending a licensed mage was important. Maybe he'd been hoping to find a loophole in the loophole. 

And Kapule, in his turn, had found the one licensed mage he knew was in the office. The one whose three innate abilities--one of which was being able to converse to plants--weren't much use in a conventional research job (though she knew being a plant whisperer could have been a lot of help in an unconventional one). Her other two odd magical skills had been useful exactly once when she was little, and that had been a fluke. 

Human mages could and often did call for magical courts, though That was practically Magical Law 101. Her power wasn't impressive, but she _was_ a mage. Not only that, but she had majored in magical law. Between that and the lockdown, it explained why she was here.

She wasn't an attorney specializing in the magical world. She didn't routinely deal with dryads or other forest spirits. She wasn't even a field agent. But she was the closest thing to an expert that the Jackson office had to offer.

And wasn't _that_ discouraging.

The portal was closed by the time they reached the cabin, probably because by then, so was the Jackson office. That was fine by Rita; she doubted she could endure two disorienting trips in a single day. Frankly, she was spent. So, for that matter, was Bellrock. 

Otterson, muttering something about stubborn humans who pushed themselves too hard, shooed Bellrock off to bed, retrieved Rita's sleeping bag from her duffel bag, opened one of the cans of dog food that Rita had brought and fed Ochoa, and then began preparing dinner. Bellrock protested that he could get up and help even if he had walked twenty miles, but Otterson gave him what Rita had always called "the fishy eyeball" and he fell silent.

Rita didn't bother to protest. Her legs felt as if they were pulsating as well as feverish. Moving even an inch hurt. She had thousands of other uncooperative witnesses to interview and she could barely stand up. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to totter to the portal outside the next morning.

Fortunately, the cabin had electricity, thanks to a generator, and some rather shaky WiFi. So she could do some research while stew bubbled on something that resembled a camp stove. 

The first thing she looked up was "limnatid." It proved to be an old Greek word meaning "lake nymph." Rita thought of Larisa's wooden body and frowned. That...didn't sound right. Had Otterson gotten the word wrong? That seemed unlikely. She had the impression that Otterson and Larisa had been friends, and Larisa had resembled a pine tree. Well, mostly. Was there even a word for a nymph of a pine tree?

As it turned out, the word was "pityos." Or sometimes "pitys." Rita preferred the former. It looked less like misspelled English.

"Pityos" also looked and sounded nothing like "limnatid." So Otterson probably hadn't confused one for the other.

_I'm missing something. I just don't know what it is._

_Of course, it would probably be better if I could focus on anything other than my feet._

Rita gazed at her throbbing feet and wondered if she should remove her hiking boots. They were growing agonizingly tight--rather like wearing a corset on her legs--and the soles of her feet were damp with what she hoped was only water from blisters, but she had the horrible feeling that if she removed the boots, she'd never get them back on again. And that could leave her stranded here for some time.

She rummaged through her duffel bag. She'd brought a first aid kit, but it was equipped for a sprained wrist or ankle and some minor cuts, not two swollen legs that had been forced to do far too much in one day. She cautiously sat up on the sleeping bag, unlaced her left shoe, and experimentally tugged at it.

The pain swept over her like a wave. For a moment, there was nothing in the world but a sea of red, raw agony, and she was far below its surface, unable to breathe and unaware of which way up was. 

Then, unexpectedly, the agony receded. Rita frantically gulped for air. As her ability to focus on the world seeped back somewhat, she realized that Daphne Otterson, her expression somewhere between I'm-not-going-to-let-anything-else-go-wrong and unreasoning panic, had cupped a very large hand over Rita's left shoulder. 

"Why didn't you tell me you were in pain?" she said in a tearful tone. "I can help. Really I can. But I need to know what's wrong first!"

"I didn't know it was this bad," Rita protested weakly. "And...I didn't want to cause either of you any more trouble. You've both been incredibly patient. You both had to walk at a quarter of normal speed"--this was a guess, but she was sure that she wasn't off by much—"just so I could keep up. And Ranger Bellrock put up with my panic attack en route to the lake."

Bellrock snorted at this. "I think you're the one who has to put up with panic attacks, not me."

"And why would I think that someone else's pain was an annoyance?" Otterson asked, shaking her shaggy head in perplexity. "Healing the world or animals or people...it's all part of the same thing: making the world better." Her tone said that this was self-evident. 

"I thought you were a hydrologist, not a healer," Rita managed to gasp.

"I'm both. And I can heal you." Otterson paused for a moment. "That is...if I have your permission."

"Definitely!"

What felt like a river of sunlight flowed through her. Heat rippled across the soles of her feet and half of her legs. The pain wasn't entirely gone, but it had ebbed to a minor ache. It was such a drastic change that Rita briefly felt more than a little dizzy.

Otterson gazed down at her and gave a bark of satisfaction. "Leave the boots on for another half hour. The swelling and the last scraps of pain will be gone then, and the new skin won't be tender or fragile any longer." And as if she hadn't just performed a minor miracle, she went back to the sink, scrubbed her paws while humming something, and then began stirring the stew once more.

"Thank you," Rita said, her voice breaking. "I wish I could do that." _Maybe when I get home, I can look into some online classes for magical healing. It would be useful._

"This day has beaten you up, hasn't it?" Bellrock said quietly. "First the shadows and then the road."

Rita exhaled. "Yeah. That's what you get when you send a researcher to do a field agent's job. Please don't judge the entire FBI by me. It's been a while since I've run obstacle courses. Mostly I just make books and computers sit up and beg."

"I'm not fond of people who judge an entire group based on one person," Bellrock murmured wryly. "Can't think why. So. Why _did_ the shadows bother you so much?" He glanced at her a trifle apologetically. "If you don't want to answer, you don't have to."

She _didn't_ want to answer, as it happened. But...she had promised. Promises had mattered to her mother. "Never make a promise you cannot keep," Graciela Marroquin Estrada had told Rita a thousand times as a small girl. "And if you do make a promise, be true to it. It is a matter of honor."

She closed her eyes and leaned against the cabin's wall. "It's because of the Erinyes. And their obsession with blood kinship.

"My...my sire, I guess you'd call him, as he definitely wasn't a father in any sense of the word...he made a lot of bad deals to gain power. One of the deals involved a half-brother of his--the last one standing. The half-brother was...devoted to the Erinyes, physically and magically. One of their favorites, really. But my sire didn't believe in the Erinyes. All he saw was that his brother had power that _he_ didn't. So...he took it. Along with his brother's life."

Bellrock winced.

"I imagine that his brother's masters were not pleased," said Otterson, scrutinizing the stew.

"They weren't, no. And since kinslaying was involved...this wasn't just an assassination of one of their followers. It went right to the heart of their power. They _couldn't_ ignore what he had done. Which was how I got involved. I was the only relative that my sire had left. I didn't know anything about him. Even my mother didn't." _She wasn't told any details. That's how sperm donations **work.**_

"So one night they...stole me away. When I woke up, I was in a lightless cave. I learned later that it was half in our world and half in the Underworld, so no one could enter from either direction. It seemed huge to me, but I was only six. It probably wasn't. 

"Their plan was to remake me. To turn me into something that could magically kill inadvertently. That way I could assassinate others the way his brother had and could kill _him_ without directly attacking him. They didn't want to drive me mad for killing a relative. Not at first, anyway.

"I was in that cave for months. I told you—" A nod at Bellrock. "--about the side effects. Their leader was convinced that I was resisting them, thwarting their just vengeance on a man I didn't know. She radiated burning cold rage. It was like having a blizzard angry with you. Or a black hole. 

"And the more infuriated she became, the more the cave changed. It would shrink until it was pressing against my eyeballs. Sometimes it would exude acid so that my skin sloughed off and I was nothing but a mass of raw nerve endings. Sometimes I would bump into a wall--I couldn't see where I was going, after all, and the cave was always changing--and then my lungs would vanish. Obviously it didn't kill me...but I wanted it to. She always laughed when the cave did that, saying that it was good practice for a mortal, learning what it was like to be dead.

"One day the leader gave up on me completely. I don't know why. I think _he_ had killed more of the Erinyes's devotees with his stolen power, and she felt that whatever death I managed to inflict on him just by existing wouldn't be bad enough. Especially since more than one follower was now dead.

"Sometimes--usually when food or liquid was being flung at me—there was a small opening in the cave. It was never there for more than a few moments, and I was terrified of passing through it, certain if I did that it would eat me. Or, perhaps, paralyze me and trap me in a stone wall forever.

"That day, the leader summoned a boulder that rolled across the opening, blocking it. She only said three words: 'Enjoy her forever.' 

"I knew she was talking to the cave. That she intended that self-willed nightmare to be my body's grave and my soul's prison for the rest of eternity--and that she considered this curse justice, given what _he_ had done.

"I screamed…or tried to. I pounded on the boulder, which was already melding with the wall. I remember trying to push past it, as if there was a crack in the boulder big enough to be a door. There wasn't, but I kept trying just the same.

"And then...I was out. Soaking wet, covered in dirt and pebbles...but out, and lying near a stream. It was night, but the stars were out. It was more light than I'd seen for...eons. It burned like fire. I must have cried out, but I don't remember. I do know that I was sobbing when a party of hunters found me at dawn. I heard the word 'monster' a few times. I wondered if I was about to become someone's grotesque trophy. One of the hunters overruled the others, though, and got me to a hospital." 

More had happened after that--a lot more--but she wasn't going to discuss it now.

"Anyway," she said, striving for light-heartedness, "that cave's why I'm afraid of the dark. And that's why I need a service dog. Ochoa's my third." She smiled. _See? I can smile. It was an awful experience, but I'm getting therapy and I'm trying to move past it. And I'm fine. I'm **fine**._

The appalled and sickened faces of the two rangers suggested that they might not agree.

 _Time to change the subject, then._ "Is dinner ready?"

***

Dinner was virtually mute. Rita said little save to compliment Otterson on how good the stew was. Otterson and Bellrock barely said that much.

_I'm a terrible detective. When you have to talk to people about a crime, you don't want to embarrass them with your memories of childhood trauma._

_At least I can bring the lab the samples tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe, I can convince Kapule to give this job to someone else. I can stay in Jackson and research. I'm good at that._

She turned off her laptop and phone shortly after dinner; charging either would have to wait until the next day. She then dozed off, waking once or twice. Mercifully, each time, the cabin was still filled with light.

Otterson woke her the next morning. At _six_.

"Oh, God," Rita muttered, trying desperately to burrow into her sleeping bag for five more minutes of rest. "You're a morning person."

"I know it's early," Otterson said apologetically, "but I thought that you might like to give yourself a sponge bath and then have some coffee outside before breakfast."

The words "bath" and "coffee" were too much to resist. A half hour later, Rita--now somewhat freshened up—was outside the cabin, gazing at the greyish-white pre-dawn sky. Otterson followed about five minutes later, an enormous mug of sweetened black coffee in each hand. She offered one to Rita, who accepted gratefully.

And, a few minutes later, Otterson began to speak of Larisa.

She'd been young, as nymphs went, and passionate. She'd loved water, the ocean in particular. She'd longed to study water magic and marine biology.

"She would have--I don't know if 'liked you' is the right phrase," Otterson said quietly. "But she would have understood you. And she'd have hated your kidnappers."

"She was trying to break away from her tree, wasn't she? Because she was born a pine tree nymph."

Otterson nodded. "She wanted everything the human world had to offer. And as long as she was bound to a tree, she couldn't go further than its roots. Water can flow further than roots--it doesn't always, but it can.--so she was trying to exceed her limitations. To sever bonds she didn't want, and create some that she did."

"How did her family feel about that?"

"That such dreams were unrealistic. That they'd only bring her pain."

 _Well,_ Rita thought bitterly, _they got the second part right._

"Why didn't you call for a magical court yourself?" she asked the ranger. "You're a mage."

Otterson shook her head. "I'm not federally certified yet. And even if I were...I think that someone who isn't from this area will have a better chance." 

"What about Ranger Bellrock?" He wasn't from Yellowstone, but he _was_ a mage.

"He's a _technomancer._ " Otterson gave an unwilling cough. "He'd be perfect if a helicopter or a generator needed to talk to us."

 _But we don't, do we? It keeps circling back around to me._ Rita sighed.

A few moments later, a massive translucent purple bubble materialized.

"There's my ride home," Rita said, handing her mug back to Otterson. "I'd better go get ready. Thank you for the coffee and conversation—" she brushed her left leg with the palm of her hand "--and everything. I hope I can come up with a solution to this."

"So do I," Otterson said softly. "Oh, so do I."

***

Rita handed off the samples to a displeased sorcerer in Magical Lab #7, humbly apologizing for not returning the previous day.

"Did you try?" asked the sorcerer, crossing his short, stubby arms and looking down his nose at her. He might have been an elderly dwarf out of Tolkien if not for the fact that his head grew up and out into a large flat brown mushroom.

"Yes!" 

"Then why...aaah. You were being haunted. I see."

Mushroom people, Rita reflected, were more perceptive than she liked. "I--have to get back to my computer. If you find anything…"

"Yes, yes. I will make sure you know." The mushroom sorcerer flapped a dismissive hand at her as he conjured an assortment of floating flasks for the samples. Rita, feeling there was no more she could do, headed to Kapule's office.

That proved deeply unsatisfactory. Kapule--who _did_ know of the legal tangle surrounding the Zone of Death--was not pleased that she had not found some justification for summoning a magical court.

"There's no point in my summoning a court if I don't know who the guilty party is! I _witnessed_ Larisa's death, and I don't know!"

"You couldn't find the weapon?"

"It was wind," Rita sighed. "Something used wind to slice her in half. Then it waited for her to die, before amputating her feet and turning them to ashes." 

_And then it started to do something similar to Larisa's hands, but it was interrupted by Otterson. I wonder why she was patrolling there in the middle of the night? Did she know that Larisa was going to talk things over with a testy family member? Did Otterson hope that having a stranger there would defuse things a bit?_

"Not even dying words?" Kapule gazed at her imploringly.

"We might have a word. We might have part of one. I just don't _know_."

And, hours later, slumped against her monitor, Rita still didn't know. She'd started with a search on dryads, took a side trip into "forest creatures", segued into "water spirit" and "water deity", and then leap-frogged into "plants in legend" and "mythological trees." She'd also torn apart every online thesaurus looking for words beginning with "choo", "chew," or "chu." 

And she hadn't found a blessed thing. Words, yes, she'd found words. Most had something to do with chewing or choosing. But somehow she couldn't make herself believe that Larisa's last words had had anything to do with either.

_She was fighting with someone. Whoever she was arguing with is probably a calm person, most of the time. Larisa wasn't afraid to turn her back on her killer. She didn't even think about it. But instead of being calm, they lashed out._

_I'm sure she was trying to call out a name or title to ask them why they'd attacked her. But...what name? What title?_

It seemed unlikely that Larisa had died calling for a chupacabra.

After about ten minutes of examining every name and type of nymph in the Department's library and confirming that none had names or species that began with anything that could be construed as a "chew" sound, she switched to its index of forest spirits. _There are fewer of them than nymphs. And at least they fit the crime scene._

Moments later she was staring at two words.

Chuhaister.

Chullachaki.

But digging into who these entities were didn't help. The first, originally a Ukrainian being, was an allegedly cheerful spirit who liked singing and dancing. The other had been born in the Peruvian and Amazonian rain forests. It was labeled evil, but Rita wasn't certain. It liked getting people lost, and it was certainly willing to curse those who refused its dangerous and almost impossible challenges. But that was a long way from cutting someone in half. 

_If I just knew the motive—_

An image of Larisa's severed wooden hands and feet drifted through her mind. _Why did Chew do that? There has to have been a reason._

She stared at the screen for a few moments, then abruptly saved, logged out, and put the computer in sleep mode. Then she called Kapule's office.

"I'm going down to the labs. I’ve got some questions."

***

The mushroom man--Sieni was his name, he informed her acerbically--was not pleased to see her and refused to admit her to the lab. "I am busy!" he shouted through the door. "Tests do not grow themselves, you know." 

Rita reflected that almost everyone she'd ever met in the FBI was focused on what mattered most to them, whether that was justice, art, or something drastically different. Sieni, apparently, loved his tests. "I'm sorry. I need your help. If you could just answer a couple of questions, I'll be happy to leave. Please?"

"One of the tests is at a delicate stage. I don't want it contaminated. There aren't a lot of samples, you know. Why didn't you bring the body back?"

"Because I didn't have a body bag, and I couldn't carry it. It was in two parts, anyway."

"Two parts?"

"Yes. Sliced in half at the waist. And her hands and feet were cut off after death, but—"

" _What happened to them?_ "

"Um...the feet were burned to ashes by magical fire. I don't know what happened to the hands."

"Find them," Sieni said. It felt like a royal command. "I'd have more to work with, then."

 _But I don't know where they are!_ She was about to say this aloud when an image of the crime scene drifted through her mind. Two halves of a log lying on grass next to a lake. Wet, slippery grass leading to a lake with no docks or boats or fishermen. A lake that she and the rangers had barely noticed.

"Someone doesn't want me looking there." Which was oddly satisfactory. If someone was trying to keep you from finding out something, there was generally something to find out.

"So? Look anyway. That is what humans do, yes?"

"Yes." For a moment Rita wished that she had a knowledgeable bartender or a troubled cop to talk to, like in a noir movie, instead of an irked lab tech. "I found a couple of words. I think that they might be related to the case. Chullachaki and chuhaister. Maybe they could help, if I found them."

Sieni snorted. "The chullachaki doesn't _help_. It protects the forest, and the animals in the forest. It doesn't have much to do with humans, unless the humans are hunters, lost or both. It probably wouldn't talk to you. It wouldn't see any need."

"Does it kill?" 

"Anything can kill. Especially a guardian, if there's need." Sieni's very voice sounded as if it was shrugging. "It doesn't make a habit of it. Mischief is more fun."

"And the chuhaister?"

There was a pause. Rita had the impression that she'd startled Sieni.

When he spoke again, his voice was careful and controlled, with none of the casual knowledgeability that he'd demonstrated a moment ago. "Why do you want to talk to the grandfather of the forest?"

_Grandfather. That would fit. Larisa could have been calling her grandfather's--name? Title?--to beg him to stop. Or to ask him why. And the other members of the family saw it. At least the trees and nymphs who were close enough did. I'm sure that everyone in the forest has heard by now._

_No wonder no one is talking._

"I thought that he might help," she said, donning a plastic smile despite the fact that Sieni couldn't see her. "What little I managed to discover said that he was quite nice."

Sieni growled out the next seven words. "'Nice' is not the same as 'good.'"

_Like my sire. Perfectly nice--under the right circumstances. No one wants to remember the wrong ones._

_That does make a picture, doesn't it?_

"I don't want to fight him," she said truthfully. "My magic doesn't lend itself to fireballs and lightning bolts."

Sieni's next words were as bitter as regret. "No one can fight him. He is the wind. How do you fight the wind?"

***

Rita spent the remainder of the day telling Kapule that she needed to go back to Buffalo Lake to retrieve a body part, that she needed two portals (the old one in front of the ranger cabin and a new one from Jackson to the lakeside proper), and that she wanted as many non-human mages with her as possible.

"Look," she said, trying to keep the tartness from her voice when Kapule protested for the fifteenth time that she didn't need all those agents. "I am going up against a very old and powerful forest guardian with zero offensive spells. A forest guardian who probably won't acknowledge that humans have any jurisdiction in his territory. I want backup. And I want non-human people--preferably forest people-- who can not only call for a magical court instantly but whose voices will be heard."

' _You_ don't have to go up against him at all. You're a _researcher_. Until a couple of days ago, I thought you were very happy being a researcher."

"I am!"

"Then why all...this?"

"Because I think I have the best chance of retrieving portable physical evidence--without the expense of diving equipment, oxygen, radio…"

"How are you planning on performing this miracle?"

"If the portal is lakeside instead of cabinside, I can jump in from here, grab the...the evidence, and portal out again. Backup can come in while I'm in the water. I hand off the evidence to the senior agent, who then calls for a court. Magical courts are more accommodating than mundane ones. They'll listen."

" _If_ the ritual is done right. And _if_ any magical beings are willing to challenge the chuhaister." Kapule shook his head. "There are a lot of holes in this, Rita."

Rita suddenly felt drained of all energy. "I know. This is all I can think of, though. What would you do, if you were in my place?"

"Honestly? Assign every agent I could find and order all the equipment available. I'd let the accountants and the home office sort it out later." Kapule then sighed. "Not options at the moment."

He scrutinized her for a few moments. "All right. I'll pull together a team and give the order for the portals. The rangers should have the option to see the end of this, anyway. You can go as a diver--and that's all. You're not going to be in charge."

_Thank God._

"And you're leaving Ochoa here."

"What?!"

"You're going to be deep under the water. The dog won't be able to swim down that far. And if everything goes as it's supposed to, you'll be in and out of Yellowstone in an hour or so."

The thought of plunging into the depths without her service dog was a daunting one. On the other hand, Ochoa wouldn't be anywhere near the forest if anything went pear-shaped. 

Slowly, she nodded.

***

Two days later, Mason Kapule notified Rita that the team had been assembled and that she would be the diver.

" _The_ diver," Rita said, feeling a flutter of fear within. "The only one."

One lone, grudging word. "Yes."

"Couldn't find any naiads or water gods?" A shot in the dark, but Rita had a hunch that this, more than anything, had caused the two-day delay.

"No. And I looked. There's also no one local on your team. No one wants to fight this...entity."

Rita wrapped her arms about herself and gazed at the top of Kapule's desk. "I don't want to, either. I just want to arrest him for murdering his granddaughter. I want someone, preferably his own people, to hold him accountable. And I want some...some justice for Larisa. She loved freedom and magic and wanted to make the world a stronger and more beautiful place. She had at least one friend who's now heartbroken. She deserved _better_ than this." 

She gulped and added quietly, "The whole world got cheated. And all because of one spiteful old—" Her vocabulary failed her. _Perhaps that's just as well._

***

That day--Friday--was punctuated by the team members' arrivals. Rita was too nervous to focus on anything except that night's swim, though the storm hag from Lake Erie and the snallygaster, a half-bird/half-reptile with a sun-shrouding wingspan, did stand out. 

She dashed home at noon, staying just long enough to pick up her swimming gear and a large waterproof pouch whose contents she hoped she could finesse into a distraction. It wasn't unnoticeable, hanging around her neck, but it was all she had.

At five, Kapule escorted Rita, now clad in a meticulously designed swimsuit--scuba gear and oxygen tanks being far less important than a custom-made garment with a variable reality field--and the rest of the team to a portal room. 

"We'd hoped to complete this mission this afternoon," he said. "Now...we're running behind. We need to get in and out as quickly as possible. Her job—" He nodded at Rita. "--is retrieval. Yours is arrest and containment. Once you receive the evidence from Rita, capture the killer and get him in front of an acknowledged magical court. Then all eight of you leave. All right?"

"Why are you having a human do a water god's job?" demanded the snallygaster, the large red eye in the center of its forehead glaring at her.

"Because she volunteered to do it. Any other questions?" 

There were no more.

"All right." Kapule exhaled loudly. "Good luck, everyone. Your portal's in Room 206. Rita, you're first. The rest of you--give her a half hour."

"We _could_ do this under cover of night," grumbled the storm hag.

Rita met the hag's gaze. "I think that you'll find a summer evening surrounded by immense pines quite dark enough." Recognizing that the hag was eager to argue for hours if need be, she ducked her head and entered Room 206.

The portal sent her to the west side of the lake, a good distance from the crime scene. That was all right. She didn't have to go anywhere near the crime scene. All she had to do was…

...liquefy.

For a moment, a woman completely made of water--right down to what had been her swimsuit two minutes ago--stood on the bank of Buffalo Lake. A pouch floated near the fluid that formed her neck. Then she leaned forward and _flowed_ into the lake.

It was difficult, knowing that she only had an hour. Time didn't mean much when she was in this state. 

But the darkness of the water didn't bother her; pressure, temperature and solidity registered far more clearly. And she could find any crack or crevice and flow into it or out of it. That, after all, was how she escaped the Erinyes in the first place. Unreasoning fear had driven a small girl to try to squeeze through a crack between a boulder and a cave's mouth, and from there to every crevice leading to an underground stream. The tangled layers of spells on her had made this possible. 

Her kidnappers had wanted her to be an inescapable assassin, someone who could enter any environment her sire was in and kill him. They hadn't succeeded. But they'd come close.

It had taken her years to learn how to do this consciously. And even longer to find a tailor who could craft a garment that dissolved and solidified when she did.

For some time, she simply rippled across the lake, seeking anything that might have been wooden hands. She found plenty of rocks, trout, milfoil and duckweed. But there was a distinct lack of evidence. She would have gnashed her teeth if she had still had any.

She finally discovered them on the north side of the lake, half embedded in the mud facing the crime scene. As if someone had flung them there.

Working them free was exhausting, for she had to keep shifting her hands into human form to pry the mud loose, transform once more into water to try to wash chunks of it away, rinse, repeat. How was this taking? It felt like hours.

Once they fell into her watery grasp, however, she understood with a terrible clarity. _Larisa told me why this happened, and all I heard was a metaphor._

She flowed up onto the bank of the lake once more, pushing the hands on a jet of water and then shifting quickly from a stream to a humanoid of liquid to a human once more. Clutching the hands tightly with both arms, she started to race to the west side of the lake…

...and the portal was gone.

 _No,_ Rita thought, probing the location where the portal was supposed to be. _It's still there. I can feel its magic. It's just...blocked._

Which wasn't good. Even if she could run five miles barefoot in two minutes, which she couldn't, the portal in front of the ranger cabin would only redirect her to the lake. The only way back to Jackson was shut, stranding her team in the city and her...well, here.

Alone. 

With an extremely angry forest spirit who had already killed once when his view of the world had been challenged.

_Oh, help._

**Give me back my granddaughter's hands.** The voice reverberated in a _basso profundo_. **She should remain here with her sisters.**

"That was the problem, wasn't it?" Rita said, touching Larisa's dead fingers. "She didn't _want_ to remain here. In fact, she was determined to leave for good."

**She never could have left. She was a _pityos_. Her tree was here.**

"But she was trying to transform into a limnatid, wasn't she? And she'd succeeded in part. I know her hands are smooth, pale blue, and have webbed fingers. I bet her feet were the same way. She was changing--not all the way, not yet, but enough to let her hope that someday she could live beyond the forest. And both her transformation and her dreams drove you into a frenzy, didn't it? She said it herself--you don't like change."

**Silence!**

"This is an old forest," Rita continued, striving to sound calm despite her heart being in her mouth. "I spotted a lot of saplings around here when I was interviewing the dryads, but not a lot of young healthy trees. The old trees blot out the sun, they're so tall. There's not much room for growth.

"You were afraid that your other granddaughters would listen to her, weren't you? That it wouldn't just be Larisa leaving. That it would be all of them. And sooner or later, that would be the end of the forest. Which is your entire purpose."

**The forest is my life.**

"That's not a metaphor, is it? No, I didn't think so." Rita gazed to her right, which gave her a fractionally better view of the area where the portal was supposed to be. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to materialize."

The air shivered. Abruptly, an old white-haired man in robes appeared. He only had one leg, but something told Rita that this was no disability. It was merely the mask he was currently wearing. 

Set deep in his face were two pools of darkness. Not Vantablack, and not eyes. Just two patches of unforgiving darkness from a portion of the forest that light never reached.

The chuhaister's not-eyes were gazing at her. And he was smiling cheerfully. 

His happiness was the worst of all.

Rita didn't even realize that she had been backing away from the killer until her left foot swung out over empty space. 

_Oh, God. I can't back up any further and I can't move forward because he's in the way and there isn't any portal and what do I **do?**_

**You don't like the dark,** said the chuhaister. **All of my offspring** \--and Rita knew that he was referring not only to the trees and dryads but to all of the birds, beasts, reptiles and amphibians, insects, and assorted beings in these woods-- **have said so. I think, arrogant child, that you need to feel what it is like to be drenched in darkness and despair. To be crushed by both.**

As the chuhaister spoke, Rita heard the distant sound of two _pops_ near the southern treeline. _The bridge escort must have noticed that the portal to Jackson isn't working any longer. And someone's come to investigate. Maybe the rangers. Maybe a couple of the arresting team. But he'll notice in a moment if I don't do something fast._

She shoved the hands under her left arm and pulled the pouch from her neck. "I didn't come here without a weapon, you know," she said, pouring the contents into her cupped hands. 

The blow from the wind knocked her across the lake and straight into the muddy, slippery grass beside Larisa's bisected body. The weapon was gone, scattered, flung every which way. _I'll never be able to gather them again._

**Your one weapon is gone. Now, suffer.**

It took all the strength that Rita had, but she began to laugh. "I think you're more likely to suffer than I am. Look around. What do you see?"

The grass was polka-dotted with tens of thousands of tiny, vaguely phosphorescent green specks. Just barely visible. And ever so faintly wrong.

"They're hybrids from my garden," Rita said truthfully. "Fast-growing. _Really_ fast. I think some of them are putting down roots already."

**Why are they glowing? What illusion have you cast?**

" _I_ can't cast illusion spells," Rita replied with unfeigned scorn. "I can't even summon a ball of light! I'm good at talking to plants and turning into water. And knitting. Non-magical knitting, at that."

There was silence for a few moments, followed by a hiss of horror. **The seeds truly _are_ that color. Yet I cannot discover what is making them sicken so. What have you _done?!_**

A furious tempest sprang up...and just as quickly died down. The one-legged old man became a host of two-legged old men. And everywhere they trod, more whirlwinds sprang up, driving the seeds toward the road and the forest.

And Rita let herself fall backwards into the water.

_I should have thought of this on Monday. For the return trip, at least._

Because this was Yellowstone. Hot springs. Geysers. Aquifers.

It was just a question of keeping hold of the evidence, slicing through the earth fast enough in the right direction while the chuhaister was distracted, and then locating modern plumbing. Because the nearest sink that she recalled was at the ranger cabin five miles south.

And whether the rangers were there or not, they should have a phone. Or a ham radio.

***

Ochoa, Rita learned later, had not taken kindly to being left behind. In fact, she had started howling when the lake portal had shut down. She hadn't even begun to calm down until Kapule had called Bluerock and Otterson. They had been the ones who materialized at the treeline.

"Though how your dog knew that you were in trouble is beyond me," Kapule complained.

Rita grinned. "Because she's a very good dog."

The chuhaister had eventually been too distracted by the windborne seeds to keep the portal blocked, resulting in some not particularly happy non-humans pouring through and confronting him. Ultimately, three had called for courts: a generous, fish-sharing werewolf from the Shetland Islands; Sieni the magical lab tech, who hadn't been with the team or the rangers at Buffalo Lake but who nevertheless insisted on the grounds that his people were fungi, and since fungi weren't precisely plants or animals, they would be fair to all sides; and Otterson, who had beseeched her great-great-grandmother, a wise and respected stateswoman among sasquatches, to judge the case. Rita privately thought that the sasquatches' reputation would tip matters in their favor...but it was early days yet. Anything could happen.

Kapule had been deeply displeased by the chuhaister's complaints about the seeds and the damage to his forest. It had taken him several days to calm down. After that, Rita had marched into his office, insisted on a video call with Kapule's superiors, and demonstrated to several tiers of FBI personnel that the phosphorescent green seeds were neither diseased nor radioactive but just ordinary seeds whose color she'd changed.

"I changed the color because I _knew_ he'd sense the magic!" she said impatiently after she had transformed a white coffee mug three times: once into a mug of burnt sienna, a second time into one of hot pink, and a third time into a lovely shade of chartreuse. "And I was pretty sure that he wouldn't realize that my magic hadn't changed anything beyond the color, because he was _expecting_ an attack. 

"That's why I told him I had brought a weapon. He's a wind entity as well as a nature guardian. One of our lab techs says that he _is_ the wind. I thought...what if I bait him into knocking the seeds out of my hands? Forest guardians aren't supposed to damage their own forests, after all. I figured he would do anything to rectify that mistake."

 _And I got lucky. This could have gone monumentally wrong._ But she did not say so out loud.

"You have three magical powers," one of the bosses, a lich generally referred to as the Dreadlord Xorus, said incredulously, "and one of them is changing _colors?_ "

"Yes. I am the most useless superhero."

And that, she hoped, would be the end of it.

It wasn't.

A week later, Kapule strode over to her cubicle. "Our bosses were wondering—"

"No."

"You could have a good job as a field agent."

"No."

"You'd move up further if you went to Salt Lake City. Or Denver."

Rita sighed. She hated having to explain things. "Mason. I _like_ my life. I like this office and the people I work with. I like my apartment. I like my neighbors. I like my therapist. I enjoy working in the community garden and going to knitting club. I even think that being within driving distance of a couple of rangers is pretty great. And I _love_ research. I don't want to move away from all that in order to get a more stressful job in a strange city. That, to me, does not sound like an advantage."

"They...think you're wasting your potential."

"And if I am, it's mine to waste. I don't want to spend my life chasing after things I don't care about so that other people will call me successful." Rita turned back to her monitor, gazing at the form on it without seeing it.

Kapule gazed at her seriously. "You're sure about this."

" _Yes._ "

"Oh, thank God. There's this case that's been bounced around to seven different people, and it just landed on my desk—"

"Mason!"

"What? It's ninety percent research. That's right up your alley!"

"And the other ten percent?"

Kapule hesitated for a moment.

"Come on, tell me."

"Well...you might need to interview a tarasque. And maybe a bishop-fish."

"Bishop-fish are _sea monsters._ "

"But pious ones." Kapule gave her an earnest look. "And you might not even have to do that. Just figure out how a brass fireplace, a kennel, an angry parrot, the _danse macabre_ , and duct tape fit together. That's the starting point, as near as anyone can figure."

 _I've already lost this argument, haven't I?_ She turned from her monitor to face Kapule. "I assume you have the file."

Kapule placed it on her desk slowly, almost reverently. Not that reverence was the point. It was simply stuffed beyond capacity. 

Rita eyed it with suspicion. "Whose idea was this case?" she asked.

"Oh...you know. A friend of yours. She suggested that you might need a bit more of a challenge if you stuck around, if only to keep you from getting bored."

Ochoa grinned at Rita companionably.

*** **NOTES**

[The Zone of Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_\(legal\))\--pictured as a red strip on the map of Yellowstone below--is absolutely real. 

The loophole has been known about since the early 2000s. No one has closed it yet, however.

The FBI does have an office in Jackson, Wyoming. As stated, [it is not a field office](https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices) and has no business being sent cases from field offices, but people often do irregular things during crises in the hopes that matters will somehow work out.

["Bellrock" appears on the Crow Census Database of 1930](http://lib.lbhc.edu/index.php?q=node%2F96&year=1930&hh1=1&hh2=103), so yes, Bellrock is or has been a surname of members of the Apsáalooke. The Apsáalooke are one of many nations whose territories and homelands were once in Wyoming. Presently, there is one tribal reservation for them in Billings, Montana.

The [chuhaister](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuhaister) is indeed a Ukrainian forest guardian, though the ancestor of the one in the story emigrated long ago. It has a reputation for cheer, music, dancing, and all around good humor. I doubt if a folkloric chuhaister would commit a murder. The one in this story, however, is both terrified by Larisa's willingness and ability to remake herself and is unable to think of a workable solution. 

The [storm hag](https://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/the_storm_hag.html) and the [snallygaster](https://www.legendsofamerica.com/snallygaster/) are creatures from Pennsylvania and Maryland, respectively. (Yes, they're considered evil creatures.)

The lich-employer known as the Dreadlord Xorus is named after another player's character in the RPG I play. Xorus is not a lich, but one of his close friends basically is.


End file.
